THE SACRED WELL
Yucatan has a peculiar geological structure. The soil is usually very
thin, and beneath it is porous limestone rock. Owing to the thinness of
the soil, vegetation, prolific as it is, does not grow high and the few
large trees grow only where the bed-rock has in some way been broken,
thus providing depth of soil for the roots.
The limestone foundation is of minute sea-shells, for it was all once
sea-bottom; and this porous rock is very subject to erosion, so that
the whole peninsula is honeycombed with subterranean streams and
channels and caves, while every here and there are natural wells,
or cenotes. Some, like the two greater wells at Chi-chen Itza, are
very wide and deep; others are tiny. Nowhere is the elevation above
sea-level great, and many of these natural wells extend down to
sea-level and are fed by seepage from the sea. Others, of course, are
partly fed by surface drainage and nearly all provide an inexhaustible
supply of water. Indeed, I believe that it would be practically
impossible to provide any pumping equipment which would drain the huge
Sacred Well.
In the case of nearly all these wells, except those very close to the
sea-coast, the water does not contain salt or minerals evident to the
taste, as the limestone rock is a perfect filter. The water, however,
as might be expected in this tropical setting, is fairly alive with
animalcula. One soon becomes accustomed to such fleshy nourishment in
his beverage and ceases to find it unpleasant.
In the dry season the cenotes provide virtually the only water-supply,
because there are almost no lakes or surface streams. Owing to the
porosity of the rock, moisture sinks into the earth very rapidly and in
only a little while after a heavy rain the ground is again quite dry.
To-day, as in ancient times, life is dependent upon the natural wells
and it is easy to see why the city of Chi-chen Itza was located as it
is. On every hacienda, the manor is built adjacent to a cenote. So,
too, are the villages. While cenotes are not rare, still they are not
common enough to provide a convenient water-supply for the majority of
the populace.
In Mérida the wealthy inhabitants have cenotes upon their grounds,
providing delightful places to bathe. And around them many pretty
grottos or underground chambers have been hollowed out from the rock
by artificial means, where it is always cool and where the families
resort in the heat of the day. Cenotes are often found in the jungle
and sometimes are ideal places for hunting. Where the well has sloping
walls or a reasonably good path down to the water, it is sure to be
patronized by wild animals of all kinds. Many cenotes contain fish,
especially catfish.
One device employed in olden times and still used to augment the
water-supply is a shallow reservoir, or cistern, called a chultun
(stone calabash), which fills with water in the rainy season and tides
over, to a certain extent, the arid months. But it is usually a dry
hole before the dry season is far advanced. These rain-cisterns are
of all sizes and shapes. There are a few ruined cities, like Uxmal,
which had no cenotes or other natural water-supply and which must have
depended solely upon the impounded water of many chultuns.
The inexhaustible natural wells were early utilized by the Spanish
plantation-owners, who in the irrigation of their fields employed the
noria, that ancient, rather clumsy big wheel with water-buckets or
dippers fastened to its periphery. It is in operation to-day in Yucatan
just as it is in Spain and the Levant.
At Chi-chen Itza are three main cenotes and some lesser ones. The
Sacred Well was called “Chen Ku” (_Chen_ means “well”) and was never
called _dzonot_, or cenote, which gives the impression that the great
well may have been made by human effort or at least was thus enlarged.
Perhaps, however, this idea that human agency was employed in its
construction may have arisen mostly from the fact of its circular form
and perpendicular sides, which may quite logically have been the work
of Nature alone, or Nature aided by man. De Sander speaks of this well
as having been formed in part by man, and I think his theory is not
improbable. But surely the great well is, for the most part, a work of
Nature.
Tol-oc, the next largest well in the Sacred City, was the main source
of potable water. In ancient times a stone stairway led down into its
waters. To-day the upper steps are gone, but one can see a clearly
defined line of chiseled steps some three feet or more beneath the
surface and adjacent to these is distinguishable another line of steps.
Don Eduardo thinks the stairway originally consisted of a broad flight
leading from the top of the well down to the water-level and that at
its base was a narrow stone platform. It is impossible to determine
now how wide the stairway was, or whether or not his surmise is correct
that there was a platform at the bottom.
His conclusions were made several years ago, when the water in the well
was unusually low. The fact that the rise and fall of the water-level
in this cenote bears little if any relation to local rain-fall leads
to the belief that its principal source is far distant and comes down
through some permeable rock strata, until by reason of a rock fault
it gushes up into the well of Tol-oc. Overhanging the wall are large
trees, orchid-covered, whose delicate perfume floats down to meet the
water. There are orchids here that would quickly make a fortune for a
New York florist.
At first sight the water seems dust-covered and turgid, but the dust
on the surface is only pollen from the orchids and the big lilies that
cluster against the cliff-like walls. It is therefore good, clean, and
deeply poetic dust, and beneath the surface the water is crystal clear
and cold as any bubbling New England spring. To bathe in Tol-oc is an
unalloyed joy.
The large cenote of X-Katum also is on the outskirts of the city and
is famous among the natives to-day for the purity and softness of its
water. It has no recorded history nor traditions, but the worn grooves
in the solid stone of its brink, where ropes have raised and lowered
countless jars for countless centuries, is testimony more eloquent than
words.
The many other cenotes in and around the city all contain very pure
water and are apparently inexhaustible. Around them are the remains
in stone and mortar of what were surely important structures. Near
the cenote of Yula, which is almost six miles from the center of the
ancient city, Don Eduardo was fortunate enough to uncover a large stone
tablet, one side of which is entirely filled with clear, minutely
carved hieroglyphs.
The Via Sacra—the causeway, once so straight and smooth, leading to
the Sacred Well—is now in bad condition, its outline dulled by time.
Great trees border it and their branches arch overhead, while their
roots have raised and broken the smooth avenue until it no longer
resembles a road. Smaller trees are rooted in the roadway itself.
The Sacred Well is a great pit, with sheer stone sides which are
slightly irregular. Its form is elliptical, almost circular. At the
side nearest the Great Pyramid is a small ruined sanctuary where the
last rites were performed before a maiden was thrown into the well to
become the bride of the Rain God. The ground for some distance about
this sanctuary was paved with stones. The Sacred Well, at whose bottom
dwelt Yum Chac, the Rain God, is more than one hundred and sixty feet
wide and as one gazes down its vertical sides, the drop to the water
seems tremendous; indeed it is fully seventy feet.
The sheer wall of the well is laminated, split horizontally into two
thousand bands or strata of limestone, of various widths. Some of these
bands appear hardly thicker than a sheet of paper, others as wide as
a house is high, and every lamination is separated from its neighbor
by a sandwich filling of thin lime-powder. The striated appearance is
very striking, because the laminations are dead black except where
vines, trees, and orchids or other parasitic plants or fungi cling
to and lend color to the surface. The layers of lime-dust between the
strata of rock are either pure white or cream-colored. The powder
has a hard-packed coherency, but the elements—sun, wind, and rain
together—loosen enough of it so that the plants and the surface of the
water are always covered with a thin film of dust. All about the edge
of the well is a fringe of trees, and a surprising amount of vegetation
has found a root-hold between the rock laminations of the perpendicular
walls.
[Illustration: THIS PLAN INDICATES THE GENERAL SHAPE AND SIZE OF THE
SACRED WELL AND THE LOCATION OF THE SHRINE OF THE LAST RITES]
The placid water of the pool is jade-green, due partly to the great
depth, and partly, I believe, to traces of certain salts or solubles
in the water, although I cannot speak with certainty on this point, as
I have never subjected it to chemical analysis. I have tried many, many
times to get a really good photograph of the Sacred Well and have come
to the conclusion that only the motion camera, or an airplane view can
ever succeed in reproducing the sight. The “still” photograph, taken
from the brink, shows either an expanse of wall and little water or
much water and little wall. For this reason the illustration opposite
page 116 fails to show the whole well and does not begin to do justice
to this most interesting, historic spot.
As Don Eduardo and I sat on the crumbling walls of the shrine, at the
very brink of the Sacred Well, he told me of his famous undertaking,
now so successfully carried out—the removal of the ancient treasures
from the very bottom of the Sacred Well.
“For many years,” he said, “the thought of exploring the bottom of the
Sacred Well had filled my mind. I thought about it by day and dreamed
about it by night. It became a mania which would not let me rest and
earned for me the reputation of being a little queer in the head. A
thousand times I had gone over in my mind the practical ways and means
that might be employed. Draining, dredging, or diving—it must be
one of these three. I early became convinced that probably the well
could not be drained, and certainly not with the slender finances at
my command. I concluded at last that it could be dredged, and with
comparatively simple equipment consisting of a stiff-legged derrick
with a hand windlass, a long boom which might be swung out over the
well, and a steel orange-peel buck-scoop, or bucket.
“Simple as the undertaking sounds, it was beset at every turn with
difficulties. The equipment, especially contrived and designed, was
easily ordered in the United States and put aboard ship. Getting it
ashore at Progreso, where it had to be unloaded five miles out and
lightered to shore, was the first hard job. Loading it on flat-cars
and finally unloading it at Dzitas, sixteen miles from my city, was
no less difficult. With only native assistance, without trucks or
anything adequate on wheels, and over the poorest excuse for a road,
the equipment was moved piecemeal, until, after months of the hardest
work I have ever done, it was all piled beside the Sacred Well.
“Assembling the machinery was a task of shorter duration but no less
strenuous. I would at that time have given gladly some years of my
life for the services, for a few hours, of one or two brawny, profane,
and competent Yankee ‘riggers.’ Time and again, before the cumbersome
outfit was completely in place, I expected it to topple into the well
or fall upon me and my Indians.
“At last all was ready. My Indians, about thirty in number, each had
his appointed task. The most trusted were to man the windlass and the
turning of the boom from whose projecting end hung the cable-suspended
dredging-scoop. The boom was swung out until it extended far over the
well. I gave the signal and the steel bucket descended, disappeared
under the green water, and at last came to rest on the bottom. Slowly
the boom was swung back toward the brink of the pit and stopped. Eager
hands manned the windlass to raise the bucket. Seemingly endless feet
of wet cable were wound about the drum before the filled bucket
broke the surface of the water. Up and up it rose, until it was on a
level with our heads; then it was swung in by the boom and lowered to
the spot which I had selected, where every precious scoopful should
be minutely and painstakingly examined on the sorting-tables I had
erected. No treasure must slip through our hands; nothing must be
damaged by careless handling. Anything perishable must be immediately
treated with the preservatives which were ready and waiting. My
hands trembled, in spite of my effort to control them, as I emptied
the contents of the scoop upon the sorting-tables, for soon I must
be either ‘that clever chap who recovered the treasures from the
Sacred Well in Yucatan’ or else the prize idiot of the whole Western
Hemisphere.
“I went over the muck, spreading it out, examining every bit of it, and
found nothing; not a trace of anything interesting. It might just as
well have come from any cesspool.
“Again the winch revolved, its ratchets clinking against the brake. The
big scoop, with its hungry steel lips wide open, plunged into the still
water. The Sacred Well seemed sullen in the reflection of a black cloud
overhead, as though determined to the very last to withhold its secrets.
“And so it was, day after day. The winch rolled and unrolled its cable
of steel and its manila ropes. The triple-pointed steel jaws dived into
the soft, yielding muck many feet below the surface of the well, and
came dripping up to deposit their burden. And day after day I found
nothing but ill-smelling rotted leaves and a few stones, prevented from
sinking into the mud by rotting tree branches which had fallen into
the well and which, when not too decayed to stand the bite of the steel
jaws, were brought up by the dredge. Sometimes whole trees were brought
up and their weight made our steel cable sing like the string of a bass
viol as the sodden mass was swung underneath the surface to free as
much of it as possible and so reduce the weight before raising it clear
of the water and dropping it again in another part of the pool where it
sank with a splash and swirl of water.
“At times the dredge, working between two entangled trees, was caught
as in a trap and we experienced very real difficulties and dangers in
freeing it. When the whole mass could be raised to the surface, agile
natives with axes and machetes always managed to get down to it and,
clinging precariously to cable and bucket, free it from its rotting
incubus. For hours at a time we labored with such delaying obstacles,
but always in the end the winch again rolled out its cable and then
coiled it up with nothing but a mouthful of the mucky bed of the pool.
“Several times we brought up the skeletons of deer or of wild hogs and
once the tangled skeletons of a jaguar and a cow, mute evidence of a
long-past forest tragedy—the cow feeding quietly, probably at night;
the spring of the hungry forest cat and the agonized, purposeless
flight of the bleeding quarry with the clawing jungle beast clinging
to it; the last frantic leap into the well where both were doubtless
stunned or killed by the seventy-foot drop to the surface of the water.
“Then, for a long while, finds even as interesting as these ceased.
Absolutely nothing was brought up but mud and leaves, leaves and
mud, with an occasional stone thrown in for good measure. My high
hopes dwindled to nothing and became less than nothing. The work was
interminable, nauseating. Doggedly I kept at it, however, determined
not to stop until the absolute rock bottom of the well was reached. I
tried not to let my Indians see that I was discouraged, but they did
see it nevertheless and I think wondered every day how much longer the
crazy stranger would persist in his foolishness and pay them high wages
for bringing up mud, useless even as fertilizer, from the bottom of an
abandoned well.
“But Fate was even then preparing a pleasant surprise, for one day when
things seemed darkest—a gloomy, rainy day when everything was soggy
and sodden with moisture—the dredge brought up what first appeared
to be two ostrich eggs, cream-colored and oval against the black mud
in which they rested. These proved to be balls of copal incense and
they revived at once my waning hopes. We had several times previously
brought up fragments of earthenware which seemed to be of ancient
origin and probably were, but I could not permit myself any illusions
about them. Similar ancient potsherds are not uncommon on the surface
of the ancient city. A boy ... some boy ... this year ... ten years
ago ... a hundred years or ten centuries ago ... might have taken up
a potsherd and skittered it into the well. Boy nature has not changed
through the centuries and certainly no boy with a nice, flat chip of a
water-jug at hand could have resisted the urge to see it skip far down
and across the water of this big pool. And so the potsherds we brought
up might well be ancient without having been long buried in the well.
“But the balls of copal, or aromatic resin, left no doubt. Surely they
were thrown into the Sacred Well as an offering to the Rain God in
those long-past centuries when Chi-chen Itza was a great and holy city,
the Mecca of the Mayas! With the evidence that this day brought forth
came the conviction that the long siege was at an end and that it was
merely a question of time before other and more important treasures
would be brought to light. They proved to my satisfaction that the
well did really have a religious significance in the olden days and
therefore the legends concerning it were doubtless true in the main.
“From that time on, nearly every shovelful contained some trove—balls
of copal incense or baskets that had been filled with plastic copal.
The basket-work had nearly all rotted away, but the deep impress of
its weaving still remained on the masses of hardened copal. There were
tripod vessels often filled with copal and rubber incense; wooden
fragments of various forms and of unknown use but indicating the skill
of some ancient craftsman. And among these wooden things were several
pieces of wood made in the form of an old-fashioned English bill-hook
or of a pruning-knife. My natives looked at them as they came up from
the sacred pool and called them machetes of wood, but my heart sang
with joy as I viewed them. No sword of damask steel, no Toledo blade
could compare in historical value to these simple wooden implements,
for they were, in the most primitive form, those strange weapons of the
ancient Mayas and kindred races which the eye of the twentieth century
had never previously beheld except in pictured form. These wooden
weapons were dart-throwers— the _hul-che_ of the Mayas; the _atlatl_
of the Nahuatls. They are pictured many times upon the walls of the old
temples. Warriors are shown in every attitude of throwing the dart from
the _hul-che_.
“The _hul-che_, or throwing-stick, of the Mayas is in its most
primitive form more elemental than the bow and arrow, more elemental
even than the _yun-tun_, or sling, for throwing stones. The first
ones we brought up from the well were so near the birth-type that the
hook was actually formed by the natural twist of the wood where the
branch had been cut from the parent stem. In ages past, some jungle
man, lacking a club and needing a weapon, pulled up a sapling that
had attached at its root a secondary branch. As he gave the sapling a
downward whirl, the secondary branch flew off at a tangent and straight
as an arrow. Thus, probably, came the idea of the _hul-che_.
“It is a singular and interesting fact that the _hul-che_, so
universally used by the Mayas and their contiguous neighbors, is almost
exactly duplicated by the bone or ivory throwing-stick of the Eskimos,
while there are absolutely no traces of its use by the Aztecs or other
northern Mexican peoples. In those dim ages when the human race was
young—those ages as vague to us in outline and substance as the clouds
that float across the sky—the _hul-che_ and not the bow was the common
weapon of battle and the chase. Then we must suppose some great gelid
cataclysm blotted out all humans throughout a whole region, leaving an
ethnic break between the two extremes. Gradually the break was filled
in by intrusive fragmentary races having no knowledge of the arts and
weapons that had been before, leaving only the extremes, the arctic
and the tropic, with their descent of man and his arts unbroken.
“Later on I was to have the keen pleasure of finding several votive and
ceremonial examples of the _hul-che_ representing the highest artistic
development. Possibly they are the very ones which served as models for
the carvings showing such weapons in the hands of stately priests and
other figures portrayed upon the walls and square stone columns of my
Sacred City.
“While the Mayas seem never to have used the bow and arrow, their
neighbors to the north did. Possibly the Mayas actually preferred the
more primitive and possibly more powerful weapon in whose use they
were very expert, holding it in the hand with the hooked portion down
and resting the feathered end of the dart upon it. The shaft of the
dart lay between the fingers grasping the _hul-che_, with the pointed
arrow-head even with the wrist. A powerful overhand motion of the arm
or a side swing and release of the dart sent it hurtling through the
air, and legend says that the dart thus thrown by a strong man might be
driven clear through the body of a deer.
“When these weapons of wood were brought up from the Sacred Well they
seemed to be in as good condition as on the day, centuries before,
when they were cast into the water; but almost immediately upon being
exposed to the air they began to decompose and it was only by treating
them immediately with preservatives that I was able to save them.
“With the copal balls and baskets and the wooden objects, we also
brought up great quantities of rubber incense and rubber objects. The
early legendary people who are supposed to have settled Yucatan were
called Hulmecas, which means literally ‘rubber people,’ and the name
was derived from the extensive use of rubber in their religious and
public rites; just as the Sapotecas, or ‘sapote people,’ are so called
to this day because of their extensive use of the sapote tree and
its fruits and derivatives. So says the gifted historian Torquemade,
following much the same line of reasoning as other writers, who say
that the name of the tribe called Olmecas was derived from their
general term or name for their chief or overlord.
“Whatever the answers to these mooted questions of etymology may be,
it has become evident, from the finds brought up from the Sacred Well,
that the Mayas were users of rubber in various ingenious ways. Many
of the masses of copal which I raised from the well bore, imbedded
at or near the surface, nodules or small cylinders of rubber, and in
some cases wooden splinters still protruded from the rubber insets.
Obviously both the splinters and the rubber portions were intended as
lighters for the copal, and this evidence substantiates Torquemade’s
statement: ‘They light the fires in their vessels containing the copal
used in their sacrificial ceremonies with rubber.’
“Upon several of the balls or masses of copal, as found either in their
original baskets or vases or without their containers, small figures of
rubber, built around the wooden splinters, were placed in a standing
position. At times the legs of these little rubber grotesques were half
buried in the copal. Evidently they were merely more elaborate forms of
lighters or fuses.
“One day when the dredge came up with its customary load of decayed
leaves and silt and one of my natives had, as usual, pushed his arms,
clear to the elbows, into the oozy mass, he leaped back with a cry of
terror. We all clustered about him to see what was amiss. Silently he
pointed to the head of a small dark-colored serpent with a white-ringed
neck, which stood up menacingly from amidst the muck. It was precisely
of the shape, size, and appearance of a small and extremely poisonous
viper which is native to Yucatan. Some seconds elapsed before we became
convinced that it was, after all, made of rubber. Although made by
hands dead, possibly, ere Christ was born, it turned sinuously in our
fingers as we drew it from the mud. It has retained the elasticity of
vulcanized rubber, a substance reinvented by Goodyear in modern times.
After its centuries of immersion it would surely have shriveled and
crumpled to bits if it had been long exposed to the air. I took no
chances, but at once put it in a rubber-preserving fluid.
“A number of dolls were found, made of wood and adorned with plastic
copal and rubber. They are perfectly formed and artistically colored
and decorated. Several have movable arms and legs, with joints made of
rubber.
“There was evidence that human nature has not changed—that there
were cheats and dishonest sharpers then as now. Some of the copal
balls, instead of being clear, heavy, and pure throughout, as were
the majority, had a perfect exterior appearance but within were a
conglomeration of leaves, sticks, and rubbish—evidently the skimming
or residue from the melting-pot. Doubtless some ancient and not too
honest profiteer grew wealthy through their fabrication.
[Illustration: El Castillo, the Temple of Kukul Can, on its great
pyramid, is the center of the Sacred City and the largest edifice.]
[Illustration: Looking down into the Sacred Well. Because of the size
of the well and the fringe of trees about it, the whole scene cannot be
readily photographed.]
“Weight for weight, I imagine we accumulated ten times as many
potsherds as all other specimen material combined. At times a large
portion of the silt in the dredge seemed to consist of terra-cotta
grains—an indication of the enormous number of earthenware vessels
which must have been hurled into the well. Probably for centuries
the custom was observed of casting into the pool these containers
filled with burning incense or copal. Very likely some, heated by
the flaming incense, disintegrated almost at once when they struck
the cold water, while others lasted for a time and finally crumbled
into dust. But to furnish all this red-gray mud and burnt earth-silt
an almost incalculable number of vases and jars and basins must have
been required. Luckily, by no means all of them were destroyed or even
broken beyond repair. Scores were saved entirely whole and among them
are many strange and interesting ones.
“The range in pattern and workmanship of potsherds is wide. The larger
vessels or fragments of them—cinerary urns and incense-holders—were
generally of a coarse, granular biscuit mass, well turned but unevenly
burned. They are capable, however, of withstanding a considerable
degree of heat. Between this class and a hard slate-gray ware almost as
thin and fine as porcelain, are many grades and numerous interesting
forms, such as well-made models of human heads, manikins, animals,
reptiles,—especially crocodiles,—grotesque Atlantean figures, and
tripodal temple vessels used in the sacrificial ceremonies, to hold
votive offerings or viands.
“Not always did we have such good fortune in our dredging. At times
the soft upper layers of mud caved into the pits we had excavated and
we spent many days and weeks in hauling up this mud before we again
reached the treasure-level.
“And then, one day, the dredge brought up a perfect skull, bleached
and polished to whiteness. Examination showed it to be that of a young
girl. Later came other skulls and human bones, scores of them. Most of
the skeletons were those of youthful maids, but every now and then one
was raised which had the breadth of shoulders, the thick skull, and the
heavy frame of a powerful man—no doubt some mighty warrior sacrificed
in the flower of his vigor, sent to grace the court of the Rain God.
“I remember as if it were but yesterday finding in the mud raised by
the dredge a pair of dainty little sandals, evidently feminine, once
worn by some graceful, high-born maid. These more than the bleached
skulls and bones, more than any other of the finds, brought home to
me the pathos and tragedy of those ancient, well-intentioned, and
cruelly useless sacrifices. Frequently bits of cotton fabric were
brought up, perfectly preserved but carbonized. My own theory was, and
still is, that the copal incense, falling upon the robe of the victim,
together with the substance with which the body was painted ere it was
sacrificed, exuded an oil which penetrated the fabric and gradually
carbonized it, thus preserving it. These specimens of cloth, many of
which are lovely in design and texture, are, I believe, the only relics
of ancient Maya fabrics in the world to-day.
“Detached skeletons were raised until we had upward of ninety, and
at sight of the whitened bones my heart was wrung with pity for the
young creatures whose lives had been snuffed out just when living was
sweetest. Our finds proved conclusively that the statements made to
Landa in 1565 by the natives were true—that both maids and warriors
had been frequently sacrificed to the god of the well.
“The female skeletons were those of girls ranging in age from fourteen
to twenty. The first one we raised and completely assembled had a
small, thin-walled skull, with the sutures almost separate. The
skull was delicate, shapely, with small, regular, perfect teeth. The
sympathetic imagination without effort clothed the naked bones with
flesh and substance, so that one saw instantly the graceful, lovely,
high-bred maiden and the last solemn act that had stilled the poor
girlish body, clad in all its finery and left to sink into the ooze at
the bottom of this terrible pit.
“By comparing the female skulls with those of modern Mayas, obtained
from the cemeteries of several villages, I came to the conclusion that
there was no appreciable variation or difference. These century-old
skulls might pass as typical crania of pure-blooded young Maya women of
to-day.
“The male skulls are a contrast to the female ones. Some are relatively
large, thick-walled, with protuberant surfaces, receding foreheads, and
prognathic jaws. Evidently their possessors were ferocious, primitive,
almost gorilla-like—not of the same race which bred the girl-brides of
the Rain God. Again this tallies with the tradition that the warriors
sacrificed were captives—fighting-men of high renown, who, after being
made drunk with _bal-che_ (the sacred mead of the Mayas), were hurled
into the well as fit offerings to the deity.
“Some years before the time of which I am speaking I had the good
fortune to discover in a sealed stone-walled grave the now famous Sabua
skull. I had to work on it for three days, with atomizer and glue
water, because the skull, which was perfect in shape, was no more than
lime-dust which would crumble at the least touch. By this treatment I
saved it and it is to-day a priceless museum piece kept under glass. In
view of this experience it seemed strange, almost uncanny, to see these
perfect skulls and bones come from the well, so wonderfully preserved
that they required no other treatment than cleansing and rubbing with
a weak solution of formalin to render them ready for packing and
shipment. In the Sacred Well, big and gruesome as it is, are no large
reptiles, no saurians, no fish which would or could tear apart a human
body or gnaw or crush the bones. I know this to be true, in spite of
the local traditions which speak of huge serpents and strange animals
to be seen about the well and to be unpleasantly encountered should one
be so foolish as to roam about in its vicinity at midnight. I have been
that foolish many times and have never met anything of the sort. On the
contrary, in the glorious moonlight of Yucatan the big pool has for me
an even greater lure than it has in the sunlight.
“As the excavations in the well became deeper and deeper we passed
from mud to powdered limestone, which became more and more compact
until we reached a marl-like bed into which the steel-lipped bucket bit
with difficulty, finally making almost no impression at all. It became
obvious that, although we had by no means dredged the whole well,
we had literally reached the end of our rope as far as dredging was
concerned. I was convinced that further work of the sort would bring us
many more finds, but I was quite as certain that they would not differ
greatly in character or variety from those already accumulated.
“I could not quarrel with our good fortune thus far. I felt well
repaid, even if we should discover nothing else, for all my effort and
expense. My highly speculative venture had amply justified itself.
I had proved conclusively the history of the Sacred Well. But our
dredging operations, together with soundings made from time to time,
indicated clearly that the bottom of the well was very uneven—a series
of hummocks; almost a miniature mountain range. And in the pockets
between those hummocks, where our dredge could not reach, might there
not be other treasures?—objects heavier and smaller in size than
anything we had yet found; things which, because of their weight, would
sink through the mud to the very bottom of the well.
“Never could I leave the spot until, by some means or other, this last
and final ghost was laid.”